“I wonder if my little girl remembered to bring me a kiss,” she said very softly, staring at the ceiling. She was like someone in a fairy tale making a wish.
“I might even have something pretty for her. But she must sit in my lap.”
Now Sophie was curious about something pretty her mother might give her, perhaps from her own things, a scarf or a little necklace, or a gift from a foreign country.
But when Sophie sat in her lap her mother started laughing again, differently than before, her long fingers playing in her hair, stroking her cheek, “You’re a funny little girl,” she cackled. “Do you know why you don’t love me? Because you have no heart.” The smile and look of triumph remained on her face, but her tone softened. “People who don’t have a heart have very unhappy lives. We are not responsible for our nature,” she sighed wistfully and continued speaking strangely, perhaps just joking, saying things that couldn’t be true, they were so nasty, or so sweet. When she left the room Sophie couldn’t be sure of anything. Maybe her mother was right: she hadn’t been away at all; Sophie was making up things and avoiding and ignoring her; or maybe it was Sophie who had gone off on a trip, leaving her mother all alone. Everyone in his own way was practicing some kind of magic on her.
•
Perhaps it was possible to have different parents at different times, as it was possible to move to a new house. On their Sunday afternoon walks her father pointed out some of the houses they passed. “Would you like to live in this house?” he’d ask her. Sometimes they would talk about it seriously; which room would be hers, which his, and where the governess would sleep when she had one. Her father was asking her, Do you really want it, shall I buy it? And if it was a big old-fashioned stone mansion with turrets and stone fence and iron grille she’d urge him yes to buy it now, but he’d find some small reason why not, and to placate her he’d say, We’ll go in and ask how much it costs—maybe it will be terribly expensive and I won’t have enough money. He looked so sad and upset she had to feel sorry for him. Still she would insist that he find out. “Should I?” he would ask. Yes, she’d dare him gravely, but he wouldn’t. And in the same way he would ask, if some impressive figure passed by—a peasant in sheepskin or a cavalry officer with a plumed helmet, or a small Jew with a bushy red beard—he’d ask if she’d like him for a father. At home on following Sundays he gave imitations of the people—the peasant, the cavalry officer, the bearded Jew, pretending each was her father—so she thought it was possible to have a different father or live in a different house even though it never happened; but that was only because in the end they never asked for the price of the house, or asked the cavalry officer with the plumed helmet. He was a coward, and she too; she wouldn’t ring the doorbell or run up to the cavalry officer and ask him if he would be her father. They were just a pair of cowards.
•
At St. Gellert’s bath you saw the water fall through the air and run down the steep hillside, splitting into many streams; some got caught in moss and ran into holes; most of it came down along the middle rushing in and out of rock pools at different levels, changing shapes as it dropped from bowl to bowl down to the great basin at the bottom where people could wade. It was lovely to catch the stream that spouted from mouths of marble fish or stand under the shower coming directly from the rock, feel a thick sheet of water break on your back; when it was too much, numbing, you could stand behind it, not too long, you didn’t know if you had enough air. By the rocks the stream was coming down its own many ways both hard and soft; big cold drops on the same spot; if you held out your palm, it hit with its own beat, unpredictable, alive, like someone talking to you. Four drops coming one after another and then you waited; it was busy in the moss further up, delayed in crevices, but it arrived eventually, a stately drop in her palm, very leisurely and taking its time.
She played in the outdoor pool where every half-hour for five minutes they put on artificial waves. But the fountain was more marvelous; even though she enjoyed the waves as they got bigger and bigger, other people’s screaming spoiled it, even grown-up people screaming when the big waves came, she knew they weren’t really scared; but that you screamed because you were having fun; she didn’t understand this, it always scared her, even her own Papi, he tried to explain, but it didn’t help. She was really afraid of herself, he said, she was afraid of herself screaming, he
